Brimstone p-5

by Douglas Preston

  "He just said he collected Doors paraphernalia. That's all."

  "And you didn't mind getting a call in the wee hours of the morning?"

  "In the music business, we keep late hours." Cutforth walked toward the control room door, held it open, giving the cop a big hint about leaving. But the man didn't budge. Instead, he seemed to be sniffing the air again.

  "That smell, it's really peculiar."

  "I'm about to call maintenance."

  "There was exactly this smell at the site of Jeremy Grove's homicide."

  Cutforth swallowed. What was it Grove had said? The smell is the worst part of it. I can hardly think straight. In his call, Grove said he'd found something-a lump of fur-covered meat the size of a golf ball. It had seemed to be alive . at least until Grove stomped on it and flushed it down the toilet. Cutforth felt his heart pounding in his rib cage, and he took a couple of breaths, let them out slowly, the way he'd been taught in those anxiety management classes. This was ridiculous. This was the twenty-first fucking century. Cool it, Nigel.

  "Do you know a Locke Bullard, Mr. Cutforth? Or one Ranier Beckmann?"

  These questions, coming on the heels of each other, almost physically staggered Cutforth. He shook his head, hoping his expression wasn't betraying him.

  "You been in touch with Beckmann?" he pressed.

  "No." Hell, he never should have let the cop in here.

  "What about Bullard? You been in touch with him? You know, just a friendly chat about old times?"

  "No. I don't know the man. I don't know either one of them."

  The cop made a long notation in his notebook. Cutforth wondered what it was that took so long to write down. He felt the sweat trickling down his sides. He swallowed, but there was nothing to swallow. His mouth was dry.

  "Sure you don't want to tell me more about that telephone call? Because everybody else who spoke to him that night said Grove was upset. Terribly upset. Not exactly in the mood to buy rock memorabilia."

  "I already told you everything."

  Now at last they returned to the living room. Cutforth didn't sit down or offer a seat to the cop. He just wanted him out.

  "Do you always keep the apartment this hot, Mr. Cutforth?"

  It was hot, Cutforth noticed; hot even for him. He didn't answer.

  "It was also excessively warm at the site of the Grove homicide, despite the fact that the heat was off in the house." The cop looked at him inquiringly, but still Cutforth said nothing.

  The cop grunted, slapped shut his notebook, returned the pen to its leather loop. "If I were you, Mr. Cutforth, next time I'd decline to answer a police officer's questions without a lawyer present."

  "Why?"

  "Because a lawyer would advise you that keeping your mouth shut is better than lying."

  Cutforth stared at the cop. "What makes you think I'm lying?"

  "Grove hated rock music."

  Cutforth stifled his response. This cop wasn't as dumb as he looked. In fact, he was about as dumb as a fox.

  "I'll be back, Mr. Cutforth. And next time it will be on tape and under oath. Keep in mind that perjury is a serious crime. One way or the other, we will find out what you discussed with Grove. Thank you for your time."

  As soon as the elevator had hummed its way down, Cutforth picked up the phone with a shaking hand and dialed. What he needed was a humping vacation on the beach. A beach on the other side of the earth. He knew a girl in Phuket who did amazing things. He couldn't leave tomorrow-Jowly, his biggest client, was coming in for an overdub session-but after that he'd be clean gone, fuck the rest of the clients. He was going to get the hell out of town. Away from his wife. Away from this cop and his questions. And, most especially, away from this apartment and its stench .

  "Doris? Nigel here. I want to book a flight to Bangkok. Tomorrow night if possible, otherwise first thing Monday. No, just me. With a limo and driver for Phuket. And find me a nice big house on the beach, something really secure, with a cook, maid, personal trainer, bodyguard, the works. Don't tell anyone where I've gone, okay, Doris darling? Yeah, Thailand . I know it's hot this time of year, you let me worry about the heat."

  Do you always keep the apartment this hot, Mr. Cutforth?

  He slammed the phone down and went into the bedroom, threw a suitcase on the bed, and began hauling things out of his closet: bathing suits, sharkskin jacket and slacks, shades, sandals, money, watch, passport, satellite phone.

  They couldn't nail him for perjury if they couldn't frigging find him.

  { 11 }

  By the time Sergeant Vincent D'Agosta entered the back door of the New York Athletic Club, he was a very pissed-off cop. The doorman had stopped him at the Central Park South entrance-even though he was wearing a tie as part of his full dress uniform-and upon hearing his inquiry sent him around to the back door because he wasn't a member. That meant walking all the way to Sixth Avenue, down the block, and coming back around on 58th Street-almost a quarter of a mile.

  D'Agosta cursed under his breath as he walked. Cutforth was lying, that much he was sure of. He'd taken a gamble, with that wild guess about Grove hating rock music, and Cutforth's eyes had given him away. Still, for all his tough talk, D'Agosta knew there was an entire legal system between him and a rich bastard like Cutforth. Milbanke had been a total wash: all she'd wanted to do was babble about her new emerald necklace. The nutcase hadn't given him a single decent lead, not one. And now here he was, taking an unexpected constitutional around one of Manhattan's long crosstown blocks. Shit.

  Finally arriving at the back door of the Athletic Club, D'Agosta punched the button for the service elevator-the only elevator there-and when it opened at last, creaking and groaning after a good three-minute wait, he punched 9. The elevator ascended slowly, pissing and moaning the whole way, at long last opening its doors again with a wheeze. D'Agosta stepped out into a dim corridor-for a fancy club, this one was pretty dark-and followed a little wooden sign with a gold hand pointing a finger toward Billiards. There was a faint smell of cigar smoke in the air that made him crave a good Cuban. His wife had nagged him into giving up the habit before they moved to Canada. But maybe he'd take it up again. Hell, no reason not to anymore.

  As he walked down the corridor, the smell grew stronger.

  He came through a door into a spacious room, its far wall studded with grand windows. As he entered, another guardian of the order sprang up from a little desk with a "Sir!" Ignoring the man, D'Agosta peered around the room. His eye finally discerned a lone, dark figure, wreathed in smoke, hunched over the farthest billiard table.

  "If I may inquire your business, sir-?"

  "You may not." D'Agosta brushed by the attendant and strode past the billiard tables, low-hanging lamps casting pools of light over their emerald surfaces. It was six o'clock in the evening, and through the windows, the rectangle of Central Park was a graveyard of darkness. New York was at that magical twilight moment, neither light nor dark, where the glow of the city matched the glow of the sky behind it.

  D'Agosta paused about ten feet from the man and pulled out his notebook. He flipped it open and wrote, Bullard. October 20. Then he waited.

  He expected Bullard to look up and acknowledge him, but he didn't. Instead, the man leaned farther over the green baize, his face in shadow, and tapped another ball. He chalked his cue with a swift twist of the wrist, came around the table, hit again. The table was like no pool table D'Agosta had ever seen: much larger, with smaller pockets and smaller balls in just two colors, red and white.

  "Mr. Bullard?"

  The man ignored him, moving to make yet another shot. His back was huge, his shoulders broad, and the silk fabric of his suit strained taut across them. All D'Agosta could clearly discern was the glowing stump of a huge cigar and two great knotted hands that were thrust into the circle of light, the veins on their backs as thick and rolled as blue earthworms. One of the hands sported two immense gold rings. The man tapped, moved around, tapped again.

>   Just as D'Agosta was about to say something, the man abruptly straightened, turned, pulled the cigar from his mouth, and said:

  "What do you want?"

  D'Agosta didn't answer right away. Instead, he took a minute to observe the man's face. Quite possibly there wasn't an uglier man on God's earth. His head was huge and swarthy, and though the body it was perched on seemed as massive and thick as a grizzly's, the head still appeared oversize. A lantern jaw, anchored by popping muscles, rose toward a pair of undulant earlobes. Centered between them were dry fleshy lips white against the dark skin: a particularly unpleasant combination. Above stuck out a thick, pitted nose. Massive, beetling brows jutted far over a pair of sunken eyes. From the bushy eyebrows above, a squat forehead led upward to a bald dome, its skin covered with freckles and liver spots. The impression the man gave was of enormous brute strength and self-assurance in both mind and body. When he moved, the blue silk that clad his frame rustled, and his movements were as heavy and deliberate as those of a well-muscled draft horse.

  D'Agosta licked his lips. "I have a few questions for you."

  Bullard looked at him for a moment, then shifted the cigar back into his mouth, leaned over the table, and gave one of the balls a little tap.

  "If it's too distracting in here, we can always do this downtown."

  "Just a minute."

  D'Agosta checked his watch. He glanced back, saw the mincing attendant watching them from the far side of the room, his hands clasped in front of him as if he was an usher in church, smirking faintly.

  Bullard now put his back to D'Agosta, leaning far over the table, the silk stretching and hiking up, exposing a crisp expanse of white cotton shirt and a pair of red suspenders. Another faint tap, more rustling silk.

  "Bullard, your minute's up."

  Bullard jerked his cue up, whisked some chalk on the tip, bent back down. The motherfucker was actually going to take a few more shots.

  "You're pissing me off, you know that?"

  Bullard took the shot, rounded the table for another. "Then maybe what you need is a course in anger management." He eased the cue back and forth and then, with the softest little push, sent the ball all of three inches so that it kissed another.

  That did it. "Bullard, one more shot and I'm cuffing you and leading you out the front door, past the porter and anyone else who happens to come by. I'm going to march you down along Central Park South to Columbus Circle where I parked my squad car. And then I'm going to radio for backup and keep you standing at the curb at Columbus Circle, hands cuffed behind your back, through the ass end of a Saturday afternoon, until that backup arrives."

  Bullard's hand paused on the cue stick. Then he straightened up, jaw muscles tight. He slipped his hand into his suit coat and began punching a call on his cell. "I think I'll just tell the mayor how one of his finest has just threatened me with four-letter expletives."

  "You do that. In case you hadn't noticed, I'm Southampton P.D. and could give a flying fuck about your mayor."

  Bullard raised the phone to his ear and inserted the cigar in his mouth. "Then you're out of your jurisdiction, and threatening me with arrest is misrepresentation."

  "I'm an assigned liaison with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Southern District of Manhattan Field Office." D'Agosta opened his wallet, pulled out one of the cards Pendergast had given him, tossed it onto the pool table. "If you want to complain to the supervisor, he's Special Agent Carlton and his number's right there."

  That finally penetrated. Bullard slowly and deliberately snapped the phone shut. Then he dropped the cigar into a sand-filled spittoon in the corner, where it continued to smoke. "All right. You've managed to attract my attention."

  D'Agosta flipped out his notebook. He wasn't going to waste any more time.

  "On October 16, at 2:02A.M. , Jeremy Grove placed a call to your unlisted private number. On your yacht, I believe. The call lasted forty-two minutes. Is this correct?"

  "I have no recollection of such a call."

  "Yeah?" D'Agosta slipped a photocopy of the phone record out of his notebook and held it out. "Telephone company records say different."

  "I don't need to see that."

  "Who else was there at that time who might have taken the call? I'd like the names. Girlfriend, cook, babysitter, whatever." He poised his pen.

  A long silence. "I was alone on my yacht at the time."

  "So who picked up the phone? The cat?"

  "I won't answer any more questions without my lawyer present."

  The guy had a voice to match the face, deep and scarred, and when he spoke it was as if he was scratching a match along D'Agosta's spinal cord. "Let me tell you something, Mr. Bullard: you just lied to me. You lied to a police officer. That's obstruction of justice. You can call your lawyer if you like, but it'll be from downtown and I'll be escorting you out of here now. Is that how you want it? Or should we try it again?"

  "This is a gentlemen's club, and I'll thank you not to raise your voice."

  "I'm a little hard of hearing, see, and anyway, I'm not a gentleman."

  He waited.

  Bullard's white lips curled in what might have been a smile. "Now that you mention it, I do remember that call from Grove. We hadn't talked in a long time."

  "What did you talk about?"

  "This and that."

  "This and that." D'Agosta wrote it down. This and that . "For forty-two minutes?"

  "Catching up, that sort of thing."

  "How well did you know Grove?"

  "We'd run into each other a few times. We weren't friends."

  "When did you first meet him?"

  "Years ago. I don't remember."

  "I ask again, what did you talk about?"

  "He told me what he'd been up to lately-"

  "Which was?"

  "I can't remember specifically. Writing articles, dinner parties, that sort of thing."

  It was just like Cutforth: the motherfucker was lying, llllllllllng. "And you? What did you talk about with him?"

  "Much of the same. My work, my company."

  "What was the reason for the phone call?"

  "You'll have to ask him. We were just catching up."

  "He called you after midnight just to catch up?"

  "That's right."

  "How did he happen to know your number? It's unlisted."

  "I suppose I must've given it to him once."

  "I thought he wasn't your friend."

  Bullard shrugged. "Maybe he got it from someone else."

  D'Agosta paused to look at Bullard. He was standing off to one side, half in shadow, half in light. He still couldn't see the man's eyes.

  "Did Grove seem frightened or apprehensive to you?"

  "Not that I could tell. I really can't remember."

  "Do you know a Nigel Cutforth?"

  There was a slight beat before Bullard's response. "No."

  "What about a Ranier Beckmann?"

  "No." No pause this time.

  "A Count Isidor Fosco?"

  "The name's familiar. I think I've seen it in the society pages once or twice."

  "Lady Milbanke? Jonathan Frederick?"

  "No and no."

  This was hopeless. D'Agosta knew when he was beaten. He slapped the notebook shut. "We're not done with you, Mr. Bullard."

  Bullard had already turned back to his pool table. "But I am most certainly done with you, Sergeant."

  D'Agosta turned on his heel, and then paused. He turned back. "I hope you're not planning any trips out of the country, Mr. Bullard."

  Silence. Encouraged, D'Agosta pursued the line. "I could get you declared a material witness, restrict your movements." D'Agosta knew he could do no such thing, but his sixth sense told him he had finally struck a vein. "How'd you like that?"

  It seemed as if Bullard hadn't heard, but D'Agosta knew he had. He turned and walked toward the exit, past the huge green tables with their tiny little pockets. At the door he paused, glaring at the attendant.
The smirk vanished, and his face became suddenly and completely neutral.

  "What's this game here? Billiards?"

  "Snooker, sir."

  "Snooker?" D'Agosta stared at the man. Was he making fun of him? It sounded like something a prostitute might charge extra for. But the man's face betrayed nothing.

  D'Agosta left the room, located the front elevator, and took it down. To hell with the porter and his rules.

  The last of the evening light was slowly dying in the great billiard room of the New York Athletic Club. Locke Bullard stood over the table, cue in hand, no longer seeing the table or the balls. Sixty seconds passed. And then he placed the cue on the table, walked toward the bar, and picked up the phone. Something had to be done, and right now. He had important business to attend to in Italy, and nobody-especially this upstart sergeant-was going to cause him to miss it.

  { 12 }

  D'Agosta paused on the steps of the New York Athletic Club and checked his watch. Only 6:30. Pendergast had asked him to come to what he called his "uptown residence" at nine so they could compare notes on the day's interviews. He checked his pocket, found the key Pendergast had given him. Nine. He had time to kill. If memory served, there was a dim little Irish pub called Mullin's on Broadway and 61st that served a decent burger. He could catch dinner and a cold one.

  He glanced back into the lobby, caught the eye of the snooty doorman who'd made him walk around back earlier, and made a point of lingering a little longer on the steps. The man was at his kiosk, hanging up the house phone and looking back at him, a pinched expression on his mummified face. Damn, sometimes it seemed that being a fossilized old turd was the main job qualification of a Manhattan doorman.

  Now, as he sauntered down the steps and turned left on Central Park South, his thoughts returned to Pendergast. Why the hell did he need a house uptown? From what he'd heard, Pendergast's apartment in the Dakota was bigger than most houses, anyway. He pulled the card from his pocket: 891 Riverside Drive. What cross street was that? Probably one of those elegant old buildings along Riverside Park up around 96th. He'd been out of New York too long. In years past, he could take any avenue address and calculate the cross street in his head.